At the end of last year, Spotify crunched the numbers and surfed its playlists to give thanks to its users for a ‘weird’ 2016. Now, Spotify’s brought its highly successful ‘Platform for Discovery’ campaign to New Zealand shores to highlight some the most bizarre habits of Kiwi listeners.
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Receptive.tv director Sam Aldred takes a look at the rise of global entities to find the battle between Sky TV and Fairfax, NZME and TVNZ is the wrong one.
The competition for content is heating up. Customers don’t want one service, they want choices that fit the type of household they are and the individual tastes in their household. Kym Niblock talks about making sure people choose Lightbox from a suite of video-on-demand services.
Following the Joseph Parker fight, and the illegal streaming that came with it, should TV and sponsorship brands be taking a different course of action?
The traditional notion of the music industry has been well and truly dumped on its head over the past few years, since music started its march from CD shelves to digital shelves. Yesterday New Zealand’s music revenue results were released, showing just how quick and drastic this change has been, revealing that streaming is well and truly taking over. We caught up with Spotify’s Kate Vale who says New Zealand in particular has embraced streaming with open arms, as one of the highest ‘Premium’ conversion rates of any Spotify market in the world.
TVNZ is looking to offer advertisers a means by which to reach male audiences through a new free-to-air TV channel. We chat to the broadcaster’s chief executive Kevin Kenrick about why it’s made this move.
The entertainment and media industries have seen a huge shift in recent years. Content viewing has gradually shifted to the online world and therefore advertising follows closely in tow while traditional media’s growth rate is slumping. PwC provides some insights and predictions of the movements of these industries closer to home and further afield between 2015 and 2019.
After a series of technical glitches pushed back the date from December last year, Neon is set to launch on Friday, 13 February. And, not to be outdone by news of its competitor’s arrival, Lightbox has sent out a release to various media publications in which it gloats about the strong results of Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul.
While everyone has been waiting with bated breath for the impending release of Neon, Sky this week released Fan Pass, a sports streaming service that will give viewers access to NRL, Formula One and Super Rugby. PLUS: the head of Fatso Cuan Gray has been given the reins to lead the new offering.
A recent Colmar Brunton poll revealed that half of young New Zealanders (between 16 and 29 years old) admit to illegally streaming content. And Sébastien Aymeric thinks we need to look at ways to make enforcement easier and the moral case more clear. think that’s on.
The last year has seen subscription video on demand (SVOD) become a major talking point, with various players vying to become the Netflix of New Zealand. However, claiming this title will now be difficult now following the recent announcement that the actual Netflix plans to launch in both Australia and New Zealand in March next year. PLUS: we look at Neon’s lineup.
According to data released by Recorded Music NZ, Kiwi musicians made more money from digital album sales than physical records for the first time in 2013, and, if numbers are anything to go by, this trend is set to continue over the next few years.
At end of June, upon lifting lid of Lightbox, the Spark subsidiary’s head of programming and local content Maria Mahony told StopPress that she was in talks with local film distributors to secure a deal to screen several local shows. Shortly after Lightbox’s announcements, Quickflix sent out a release saying that it had snapped up pair of local shows, which Lightbox was thought to have been interested in, and this seemingly spoiled the party for the newcomer. Then, when Lightbox later revealed its lineup there was a clear Kiwi-shaped hole in its programming, leading to questions as to whether the subscription video on demand (SVOD) provider would in fact be adding any local shows to its lineup. However, these questions have now been answered by today’s announcement that Lightbox has added no less than 19 local shows to its catalogue. UPDATE: Quickflix ups its local game with seven more shows.
Sky had a stunner last Friday when it announced great numbers, a new five year rugby deal and plans for some fancy new additions to its boxes. It also announced the launch of its much-discussed SVOD offering Neon, which is set to launch in December. Here’s what managing director Dave Joyce had to say about the strategy behind it.
Following the recent unveiling of its ambitious ‘Boroughs’ project, which will see five high-tech basketball courts introduced in Auckland, Spark has now announced a marketing partnership with the National Basketball Association. As part of this deal, Spark will offer its home broadband customers NBA League Pass and League Pass Premium annual subscriptions beginning next month, giving customers 15 percent off the full price of either a full season or a one-month subscription.
The competition for Kiwi listeners, artists and advertisers is on, with music streaming companies like Spotify, Pandora, and iHeartRadio innovating rapidly to out-do each other down under, with analytics offers, better content and new ad units. StopPress looks at what tunes the providers are playing to try and increase their numbers. PLUS: Lorde-related stats!
In recent months, on-demand streaming and subscription video on-demand services have enjoyed column inches in pretty much every publication even mildly interested in the changing media landscape. The emergence of Lightbox, the decision of Slingshot to launch Global Mode to give customers access to Netflix, Sky’s plans to launch an SVOD service in the near future and the on-demand streaming deals signed by MediaWorks and TVNZ have been just some of the areas of intrigue that this space has delivered—and a Kiwi public that previously had very limited viewing options suddenly finds itself spoilt for choice. So what exactly are Kiwis choosing and which shows are attracting the biggest audiences?
What works on Netflix also works for TVNZ. Or at least that’s what the recent on-demand statistics for Orange is the New Black suggest. Over the month of September the first and second seasons of the hit dramedy, a Netflix original, were streamed by Kiwis via TVNZ Ondemand over a million times.
TVNZ is bringing a Netflix original to Kiwi screens in the shape of Orange is the New Black, in a move that will see all the episodes of both seasons of the popular prison dramedy, which recently won three Emmy Awards, streamed via the TVNZ Ondemand service for the month of September. PLUS: we look at how Netflix decides on which shows to invest in.
Spark Ventures’ Lightbox subscription video on demand service officially launched last night, and, not surprisingly, its arrival seems to have been the catalyst for a fair bit of activity in the streaming space, with TVNZ now offering online box sets of Orange is the New Black, Freeview’s Sam Irvine talking up an integrated broadcast and broadband offering, Quickflix claiming that more competition is a good thing and Sky, which recently announced another big profit increase, getting set to launch its own streaming service for non-Sky customers. So who’s got the best offer?
Comedian and actor Ricky Gervais, who currently stars in Netflix original Derek, has branched out and stepped into the lead roles of several of Netflix’s shows for a new campaign that aims to promote some hit programming available through the online streaming service. The 60-second spot sees the rotund actor stepping into House of Cards, Lilyhammer and Orange is the New Black as he becomes part of the storylines that he has followed on Netflix.
Many of those who drove to work at the right time on 14 July claim to have found the Kiwi roads free of the traffic jams that usually typify the morning commute. This fortunate state of the road was largely attributable due to the nation’s universities and schools being closed for the winter break, but the fact that 419,000 people (according to Nielsen TAM) tuned in to TV One to watch Germany take on Argentina in the final of the World Cup definitely also played a part.
Last week, shortly after the release of Telecom’s Lightbox offering, Quickflix announced an agreement with South Pacific Pictures that gave the veteran in New Zealand’s SVOD market rights to over 120 hours of local content via Go Girls and Outrageous Fortune. And given that Lightbox’s head of programming and local content Maria Mahony admitted to StopPress that she was currently in talks with local film distributors to secure a deal to screen several local shows, this announcement by Quickflix will no doubt be competitive blow to the newcomer.
Movie and TV streaming service Quickflix has announced the launch of a pay-as-you-go service, which it is offering to non-subscribers.
The wait for mobile viewing is over for Sky subscribers who don’t own iPads, as the broadcaster has just announced the launch of a new version of the Sky Go app that’s compatible on certain versions of Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets. Since launching in December last year, the Sky Go app has only been available to subscribers via Apple’s products—and the popularity of this initial release has led Sky to increase the inclusivity of its offering. Updated with statistics from Nielsen and with comments from TVNZ’s general manager of on-demand Jason Foden.
Only a few hours after stepping off a plane at Auckland Airport on 7 April, Pandora founder Tim Westergren sat down with us for a quick chat at the Generator, the New Zealand headquarters of the company. Although Westergren’s arrival in the country came as part of a promotional push to officially introduce the music-streaming platform to the New Zealand market after its release late last year, Pandora is by no means new to the Kiwi market. PLUS: a look at how Pandora’s offering compares to Spotify and iHeartRadio.
A Christchurch company with a long history in media production and an early adopter of YouTube is on a growth drive among organisations that have a message to beam to the masses.
New Zealand Rugby conducted something of an experiment last week when the Bledisloe Cup test between the All Blacks and Australia was streamed live and made available on-demand on www.youtube.com/allblacks to more than 45 countries where the digital rights hadn’t been allocated exclusively to a broadcaster. So how did it go? And should Sky be worried?
You can stop arguing over the office radio now: internet radio service iHeartRadio has finally gone into open beta in New Zealand.
Without much fanfare Google has launched its terribly-named streaming music service Play Music All Access in New Zealand Australia, the first markets to receive it following the launch in the US in May.